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- Unix System V for the IBM PC-AT and compatibles
-
- Microport Systems of Aptos, CA., is selling a full AT&T System V
- Release 2 for the AT and compatibles. This implementation apparently
- grows out of the Digital Research work to port Unix to the 80286 for
- Intel; Microport claims to be made up from the people on that project,
- and in fact they sell a version of the system for the Intel development
- box.
- Release 2 includes lots of things left out of the earlier releases
- of System V, such as job control, a faster shell, multi-process profiling,
- user lint libraries, vi 3.9, curses, and so forth. Microport will be
- offering, later this year, a set of Berkeley enhancements including the
- cshell.
- The Microport implementation takes advantage of the 80286 protected
- mode, only the second OS I know of to do that. So, AT extended memory
- may be used (up to 16 megabytes, I guess). Many different hard disks
- are supported, including non-standard configurations, as long as they
- conform to the ST-506 "standard".
- The most amazing thing about this offering is the price. You get
- System V, the development system with C, Fortran 77, make, sccs, sdb,
- and all that stuff, and the text processing system with nroff, troff,
- and spell, all for $389.95, including shipping and handling. The
- run-time system alone is $159.95. Now how much would you pay? Don't
- answer yet! The Berkeley enhancements package is going to cost $99.95
- when it becomes available. Also coming is the ability to run Xenix
- binaries.
- I've ordered one, and should be getting it later this month or
- early next. I'll report on my experiences. In the meantime, the
- company is:
-
- Microport Systems
- 10096 Soquel Drive
- Aptos, CA 95003
- (408) 688-0286 (cute)
-
- -- Dan Frank, Madison, WI, where it never rains, it snows.